When Jason Kenney first confided his plan to quit federal politics, run for the leadership of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party, propose some kind of merger with the Wildrose Party, convince the grassroots of both parties to agree, and then run for leadership of the newly merged United Conservative Party in order to amalgamate all of the province’s Conservative votes and defeat the NDP in the 2019 election, I was skeptical.

That seemed too complicated. Kenney himself was too polarizing. His pitch to the electorate seemed off. There were too many potential points of failure. Too many things could go wrong.

But I was wrong! Kenney has executed all but the last of these steps masterfully — winning the leadership of the UCP with 61.1 per cent of the vote on Saturday night in Calgary.

Jason Kenney is covered in balloons as he celebrates after being elected leader of the United Conservative Party.Gavin Young/Postmedia

And now I can’t decide whether he stands poised to defeat Rachel Notley’s government, or if the political fates are concocting an extraordinary and cruel lesson in hubris.

My well-learned lessons against underestimating Kenney, the state of anger in Alberta and a few polling numbers suggests it’s probably the former: The smart money is on premier Kenney.

The UCP lead is commanding, and spans almost every demographic in the province.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley speaks to reporters following a Council of the Federation meeting in Ottawa on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017.Justin Tang / The Canadian Press /
THE CANADIAN PRESS

On the other hand, we are still more than a year-and-a-half away from the next election, the less said about public polling the better, and Alberta is a political bizarro-world that will defy every stereotype and expectation to keep pundits like me gainfully employed and perpetually self-effacing.

Notley maintains one wild card: Albertans do not like to be perceived as socially regressive. Suggest we are racist or homophobic and watch the electorate flock to the status quo, as the province did in 2012 when it re-elected the Progressive Conservatives, and again, more recently during the Calgary municipal election that returned Naheed Nenshi to power for a third term.

Notley and her supporters have gleefully taken issue with Kenney’s historical positions on gay marriage, for example, but also on his more recent position on Gay Straight Alliances in schools and his support of a Catholic sex ed curriculum in separate schools.

On Sunday, Kenney said he was braced for the inevitable attacks. “It’s the same old, same old stuff they threw at Stephen Harper. It’s the NDP anger machine cranking up again,” he said. “The louder and more hysterical they get, the less people listen to them.”

There is still much work ahead for the UCP; Kenney announced on Sunday his plans to run in a by-election in Calgary-Lougheed. The party has to nominate a slate of candidates between two competing parties while drafting a full set of policies.

No doubt Kenney will prefer to focus on taxes and the economy, but the latest trap sprung by the NDP may prove how difficult that will be.

Last week, the Edmonton Journal published discussion documents drafted by the Catholic School Board, which wants to create a parallel sex education curriculum. The documents were released through Freedom of Information act. Upon their release, Notley dismissed the curriculum, implying that it taught that rape within marriage was acceptable.

“Nowhere do the rights of religious freedom extend to that person’s right to somehow attack or hurt others — and that’s what’s happening here,” she told The Canadian Press. “Consent is the law in Alberta and under no circumstances will any child in Alberta be taught that they have to somehow accept illegal behaviour in a sexual relationship. The end.”

On cue, Kenney defended the Catholic position.

This matter bears some unpacking because the discussion documents say nothing of the kind. Notley’s position is either totally ignorant or a wilful misreading of Catholic teaching, which says that consent is the bare minimum required of two people desiring sex.

Certainly, the Catholic Church does not hold progressive views on homosexuality or transgender issues, rejecting non-procreative sex specifically, and the concept that gender is fluid in particular.

But even these positions must be considered in context of the church’s teachings on sex. The Catholic position on same-sex attraction — that people who have it should be content with a life of chastity — is no more unrealistic or regressive than its position on heterosexual sex. By church law, straight people can have sex only with their married spouses, and then only for the purposes of making children: No anal, oral, masturbation or contraception is to be promoted for anyone.

Even as these positions are increasingly offside with current cultural thought — even harmful to gay and transgender people — the school board’s documents themselves seem to understand that some compromise is required between church teaching and secular tax dollars.

The Catholic school board can’t promote contraceptives, but seems to concede the need to teach about their use in detail. The board won’t promote homosexuality or alternative family structures, but insists that all men and women are formed in the likeness of God; it condemns all forms of discrimination and cruelty based on sexuality.

Nothing about the Catholic board’s proposal is surprising. It’s not realistic to expect a church that has stood for thousands of years to abandon centuries of thought on sexual relations in favour of the latest paper coming out of the University of Alberta’s gender studies department. As long as Catholic schools remain a constitutionally entrenched feature of the Alberta education system, some ideological flexibility is going to be required from everyone.

Having been in government for two years, Notley, I’m sure, understands this; she simply has no political interest in acting as if she does. Not when the shots at Kenney come this easy.